Highlights a little-known expedition of General George Custer to the Black Hills of South Dakota, showing how it set the stage for later conflict with the Sioux and the Battle of Little Bighorn. This fascinating narrative history tells the story of General George Armstrong Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills of South Dakota and reveals how it set the stage for the climactic Battle of the Little Bighorn two years later. What is the significance of this obscure foray into the Black Hills? The short answer, as the author explains, is that Custer found gold. This discovery in the context of the worst economic depression the country had yet experienced spurred a gold rush that brought hordes of white prospectors to the Sioux's sacred grounds. The result was the trampling of an 1868 treaty that had granted the Black Hills to the Sioux and their inevitable retaliation against the white invasion. The author brings the era of the Grant administration to life, with its "peace policy" of settling the Indians on reservations, corrupt federal Indian Bureau, Gilded Age excesses, the building of the western railroads, the white settlements that followed the tracks, the Crash of 1873, mining ventures, and the clash of white and Indian cultures with diametrically opposed values. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills was the beginning of the end of Sioux territorial independence. By the end of the book it is clear why the Sioux leader Fast Bear called the trail cut by Custer to the Black Hills "thieves' road."

A unique six-year compilation of British rural news, interspersed with the author's own observations on birds, mammals, fish, and aspects of Britain's countryside today. Most rural subjects are covered in a comprehensive snapshot of country life at the start of the new Millenium. From December 1999 to February 2006, scores of different issues are compressed into hundreds of bite-sized, easily digested articles. From angling to animal rights campaigns, foxhunting to farming, game shooting to wildlife conservation, a diverse collection of views, comment and advice is presented. The batty and the bizarre also get a look-in, as do the controversial and the downright crazy. With its packed pages, A Country Pillow Book could become a bedside companion for the rural researcher or a useful tool for the country-loving insomniac.

The 32 tales from the area containing the backbone of America include The Gold Behind the Waterfall (Arizona), The Treasure of Deadman Cave (Colorado), Lava Cave Cache (Idaho), Henry Plummer's Lost Gold (Montana), The Curse of the Lost Sheepherder's Mine (Nevada), Lost Train Robbery Loot in Cibola County (New Mexico), Eighty Ingots in Spanish Gold (Utah), and Lost Ledge of Gold (Wyoming). As Jameson points out in his introduction, the Rocky Mountains still have many remote areas, ....

Now in paperback, the critically acclaimed "Yellow Dirt," "will break your heart. An enormous achievement--literally, a piece of groundbreaking investigative journalism--illustrates exactly what reporting should do: Show us what we've become as a people, and sharpen our vision of who we, the people, ought to become" ( "The Christian Science Monitor" ).
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the United States knowingly used and discarded an entire tribe of people as the Navajos worked, unprotected, in the uranium mines that fueled the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. Long after these mines were abandoned, Navajos in all four corners of the Reservation (which borders Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) continued grazing their animals on sagebrush flats riddled with uranium that had been blasted from the ground. They built their houses out of chunks of uranium ore, inhaled radioactive dust borne aloft from the waste piles the mining companies had left behind, and their children played in the unsealed mines themselves. Ten years after the mines closed, the cancer rate on the reservation shot up and some babies began to be born with crooked fingers that fused together into claws as they grew. Government scientists filed complaints about the situation with the government, but were told it was a mess too expensive to clean up.
Judy Pasternak exposed this story in a prizewinning "Los Angeles Times" series. Her work galvanized both a congressman and a famous prosecutor to clean the sites and get reparations for the tribe. "Yellow Dirt" is her powerful chronicle of both the scandal of neglect and the Navajos' fight for justice.

One of the Daily Telegraph's 20 Books Perfect for Travel Scotland has its rugged Hebrides; Ireland its cliff-girt Arans; Wales its Island of Twenty Thousand Saints. And what has England got? The isles of Canvey, Sheppey, Wight and Dogs, Mersea, Brownsea, Foulness and Rat. But there are also wilder, rockier places - Lundy, the Scillies, the Farnes. These islands and their inhabitants not only cast varied lights on the mainland, they also possess their own peculiar stories, from the Barbary slavers who once occupied Lundy, to the ex-major who seized a wartime fort in the North Sea and declared himself Prince of Sealand. Ian Crofton embarks on a personal odyssey to a number of the islands encircling England, exploring how some were places of refuge or holiness, while others have been turned into personal fiefdoms by their owners, or become locations for prisons, rubbish dumps and military installations. He also describes the varied ways in which England's islands have been formed, and how they are constantly changing, so making a mockery of human claims to sovereignty.

Montana Curiosities brings to the reader with humor and affection-and a healthy dose of attitude-the oddest, quirkiest, and most outlandish places, personalities, events, and phenomena found within the state's borders and in the chronicles of its history. A fun, accessible read, Montana Curiosities is a who's who of unusual and unsung heroes. This compendium of the state's quirks and characters will amuse Montana's residents and visitors alike.

2013 Award of Superior Achievement from the Illinois State Historical Society. In the antebellum Midwest, Americans looked to the law, and specifically to the jury, to navigate the uncertain terrain of a rapidly changing society. During this formative era of American law, the jury served as the most visible connector between law and society. Through an analysis of the composition of grand and trial juries and an examination of their courtroom experiences, Stacy Pratt McDermott demonstrates how central the law was for people who lived in Abraham Lincoln's America. McDermott focuses on the status of the jury as a democratic institution as well as on the status of those who served as jurors. According to the 1860 census, the juries in Springfield and Sangamon County, Illinois, comprised an ethnically and racially diverse population of settlers from northern and southern states, representing both urban and rural mid-nineteenth-century America. It was in these counties that Lincoln developed his law practice, handling more than 5,200 cases in a legal career that spanned nearly twenty-five years. Drawing from a rich collection of legal records, docket books, county histories, and surviving newspapers, McDermott reveals the enormous power jurors wielded over the litigants and the character of their communities.

The history of Yosemite National Park is as compelling as the waterfalls, monoliths, and peaks that have mesmerized visitors for more than a century. But what hikers see today in the iconic Yosemite Valley, as well as on the peaks in the high country and within the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, is a world away from the place Native Americans once called Ahwahnee, and from what gold-seekers and mountain men looked upon in the park's earliest days. Historic Yosemite National Park is a vibrant collection of stories about different aspects of Yosemite National Park's fascinating history, from the conservation works of pivotal characters such as writer John Muir and photographer Ansel Adams to the daring exploits of rock climbers and the natural forces that have shaped Yosemite's stunning vistas. These stories reveal why Yosemite National Park has inspired humankind for centuries.

If parks could speak, what would they say? Historic Acadia National Park is a vibrant collection of true stories that share different aspects of Acadia National Park's history. From its glacial origins, to its rising peaks near the tourist-town Bar Harbor, Acadia has a unique and fascinating history for Down Easters and tourists alike. Many of the tales focus on some of Maine's most famous land formations including Pulpit Rock, Sargent Mountain Pond, Mount Desert Rock, Otter Creek, and even the Trenton Bridge. Learn about the people who first walked these woods and how Acadia National Park evolved into the national treasure it is today.

From the first rap battles in Seattle's Central District to the Grammy stage, hip hop has shaped urban life and the music scene of the Pacific Northwest for more than four decades. In the early 1980s, Seattle's hip-hop artists developed a community-based culture of stylistic experimentation and multiethnic collaboration. Emerging at a distance from the hip-hop centers of New York City and Los Angeles, Seattle's most famous hip-hop figures, Sir Mix-A-Lot and Macklemore, found mainstream success twenty years apart by going directly against the grain of their respective eras. In addition, Seattle has produced a two-time world-champion breaking crew, globally renowned urban clothing designers, an international hip-hop magazine, and influential record producers. In Emerald Street, Daudi Abe chronicles the development of Seattle hip hop from its earliest days, drawing on interviews with artists and journalists to trace how the elements of hip hop-rapping, DJing, breaking, and graffiti-flourished in the Seattle scene. He shows how Seattle hip-hop culture goes beyond art and music, influencing politics, the relationships between communities of color and law enforcement, the changing media scene, and youth outreach and educational programs. The result is a rich narrative of a dynamic and influential force in Seattle music history and beyond. Emerald Street was made possible in part by a grant from 4Culture's Heritage Program.

Taking the Fight South provides a timely and telling reminder of the vigilance democracy requires if racial justice is to be fully realized. Distinguished historian and civil rights activist Howard Ball has written dozens of books during his career, including the landmark biography of Thurgood Marshall, A Defiant Life, and the critically acclaimed Murder in Mississippi, chronicling the Mississippi Burning killings. In Taking the Fight South, arguably his most personal book, Ball focuses on six years, from 1976 to 1982, when, against the advice of friends and colleagues in New York, he and his Jewish family moved from the Bronx to Starkville, Mississippi, where he received a tenured position in the political science department at Mississippi State University. For Ball, his wife, Carol, and their three young daughters, the move represented a leap of faith, ultimately illustrating their deep commitment toward racial justice. Ball, with breathtaking historical authority, narrates the experience of his family as Jewish outsiders in Mississippi, an unfamiliar and dangerous landscape contending with the aftermath of the civil rights struggle. Signs and natives greeted them with a humiliating and frightening message: "No Jews, Negroes, etc., or dogs welcome." From refereeing football games, coaching soccer, and helping young black girls integrate the segregated Girl Scout troops in Starkville, to life-threatening calls from the KKK in the middle of the night, from his work for the ACLU to his arguments in the press and before a congressional committee for the extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Ball takes the reader to a precarious time and place in the history of the South. He was briefly an observer but quickly became an activist, confronting white racists stubbornly holding on to a Jim Crow white supremacist past and fighting to create a more diverse, equitable, and just society. Ball's story is one of an imitable advocate who didn't just observe as a passive spectator but interrupted injustice. Taking the Fight South will join the list of required books to read about the Black Lives Matter movement and the history of racism in the United States. The book will also appeal to readers interested in Judaism because of its depiction of anti-Semitism directed toward Starkville's Jewish community, struggling to survive in the heart of the deep and very fundamentalist Protestant South.

A Walk Through Rebel Dublin 1916 is a comprehensively illustrated guide to the Rising of Easter Week 1916, based on the significant locations of the rebellion. Dealing separately with thirty buildings and sites throughout the city - including the GPO, Liberty Hall, Trinity College, the Four Courts and Dublin Castle - the author provides a brief, fascinating history of the events and personalities that dominated these locations during Easter Week. A contemporary photograph of each location is juxtaposed with a photograph of the building or streetscape as it looks today. While some dramatic changes have taken place in the architecture of Dublin over the course of the twentieth century, there is much that has remained unaltered, as these images will testify. A Walk Through Rebel Dublin 1916 can be read and enjoyed without visiting the locations featured, but the reader is encouraged to walk the streets of Dublin, book in hand, to get a vivid sense of some of the most dramatic episodes in Ireland's history.

"The extraordinary story of how Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and Joe Namath, his star quarterback at the University of Alabama, led the Crimson Tide to victory and transformed football into a truly national pastime."
During the bloodiest years of the civil rights movement, Bear Bryant and Joe Namath-two of the most iconic and controversial figures in American sports-changed the game of college football forever. Brilliantly and urgently drawn, this is the gripping account of how these two very different men-Bryant a legendary coach in the South who was facing a pair of ethics scandals that threatened his career, and Namath a cocky Northerner from a steel mill town in Pennsylvania-led the Crimson Tide to a national championship.
To Bryant and Namath, the game was everything. But no one could ignore the changes sweeping the nation between 1961 and 1965-from the Freedom Rides to the integration of colleges across the South and the assassination of President Kennedy. Against this explosive backdrop, Bryant and Namath changed the meaning of football. Their final contest together, the 1965 Orange Bowl, was the first football game broadcast nationally, in color, during prime time, signaling a new era for the sport and the nation.
Award-winning biographer Randy Roberts and sports historian Ed Krzemienski showcase the moment when two thoroughly American traditions-football and Dixie-collided. A compelling story of race and politics, honor and the will to win, RISING TIDE captures a singular time in America. More than a history of college football, this is the story of the struggle and triumph of a nation in transition and the legacy of two of the greatest heroes the sport has ever seen.

History at the intersection of healthcare, labor, and civil rights. The union of hospital workers usually referred to as the 1199 sits at the intersection of three of the most important topics in US history: organized labor, health care, and civil rights. John Hennen's book explores the union's history in Appalachia, a region that is generally associated with extractive industries but has seen health care grow as a share of the overall economy. With a multiracial, largely female, and notably militant membership, 1199 was at labor's vanguard in the 1970s, and Hennen traces its efforts in hospitals, nursing homes, and healthcare centers in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and Appalachian Ohio. He places these stories of mainly low-wage women workers within the framework of shake-ups in the late industrial and early postindustrial United States, relying in part on the words of Local 1199 workers and organizers themselves. Both a sophisticated account of an overlooked aspect of Appalachia's labor history and a key piece of context for Americans' current concern with the status of "essential workers," Hennen's book is a timely contribution to the fields of history and Appalachian studies and to the study of social movements.

A well researched and intuitive study into the rise of a Yorkshire mining town, the effects of subsequent events and crucially, the responses of the community during the "Great Strike."

Lochmaben is situated in the 'debatable lands' on the main route into Scotland north from Carlisle. The area has historic connections to the family of Robert the Bruce. This close-knit community has lost several of its basic amenities in recent years but the recent community buyout of the Castle Loch has been a great success with many volunteers coming together. 'Lochmaben Voices', a project to collect the memories of the town's residents by recording interviews with them, was set up in 2011. The eldest interviewee was born in the 1920s and the youngest in 2000s and the transcriptions reflect the various accents heard in the region. For this book, three broad categories were identified: Lochmaben, both as a physical place and a community; personal recollections of living in the town; memories of the town during the Second World War, including military connections.

A call to action in an ongoing battle against industrial agriculture From the early twentieth century and across generations to the present, In the Struggle brings together the stories of eight politically engaged scholars, documenting their opposition to industrial-scale agribusiness in California. As the narrative unfolds, their previously censored and suppressed research, together with personal accounts of intimidation and subterfuge, is introduced into the public arena for the first time. In the Struggle lays out historic, subterranean confrontations over water rights, labor organizing, and the corruption of democratic principles and public institutions. As California's rural economy increasingly consolidates into the hands of land barons and corporations, the scholars' work shifts from analyzing problems and formulating research methods to organizing resistance and building community power. Throughout their engagement, they face intense political blowback as powerful economic interests work to pollute and undermine scientific inquiry and the civic purposes of public universities. The findings and the pressure put upon the work of these scholars-Paul Taylor, Ernesto Galarza, and Isao Fujimoto among them-are a damning indictment of the greed and corruption that flourish under industrial-scale agriculture. After almost a century of empirical evidence and published research, a definitive finding becomes clear: land consolidation and economic monopoly are fundamentally detrimental to democracy and the well-being of rural societies.